ROME — Pope Leo was discharged from the Gemelli hospital today after his physicians issued a written finding that he is "suitable." In the interval before his afternoon return to the Vatican, several hundred locals occupied the pavement outside the entrance for the stated purpose of watching him walk to a waiting car. Our observation post was position 14 along the steel barrier; the vigil began at 09:41. Nobody asked what we were observing. The barrier settled it.
The species does not permit a convalescent primate to walk on his legs alone; a document is required. "Until the certificate is signed, walking is only a proposal," said Dr. Fabrizia Lontani, who signs such findings at the Gemelli. "After the certificate, it becomes an event, and events require barriers." The finding was signed at 11:52. The walk has been an event ever since.
The crowd organised itself along the barrier with the fluency of a species that has practised waiting. By 10:30 the front positions were held, and the overflow kept a waiting list of its own, recorded by a volunteer marshal on the back of a hymn sheet. "Forty-two names by noon," said the marshal, Sandra Migliorati of the Lazio Pilgrimage Volunteers. "Some are for tomorrow's walking. Tomorrow's walking is not scheduled. They signed up anyway." She said it the way one reads a weather report.
"I am not here for his health," said Renato Sbaffi, 71, a retired tram driver attending his third consecutive morning at the barrier. "I am here for the walk. The walk is the event. The hospital is only where they keep him between walks." He had brought a folding stool, which by our count has attended all three mornings.
Our field count: the vigil produced two hymns, one thermos, eleven declarations that he "looks better than on television," and, at minute nine, the fourth apology of the morning, offered by a woman whose elbow had entered a stranger's sightline. The stranger accepted it, then apologised for the delay in accepting. No fifth apology was recorded. At 12:07 the door opened. The crowd applauded twice while it was still closed. The walk to the vehicle lasted 38 seconds, drew six further rounds of applause, and raised an estimated 9,400 devices; our sample of the resulting photographs suggests 9,392 show the back of another local's head.
The vehicle then carried the subject to his residence, a walled state inside this city, as scheduled. The certificate remains on file at the hospital. Field note for the archive: the subject completed the walk without assistance, and the document that authorised it is longer than the walk. On Terra, the paperwork walks ahead of the legs. The legs have been found suitable.
